In 2016, we see more and more home buyers starting their home search online. Today, having an online strategy is an absolute necessity when conducting a business. More and more builders are utilizing digital marketing. If you're not providing the solution, you can best be sure that your competitors will. While there are a lot of opportunities online to take advantage of, today we'll discuss one of the most popular: search engine optimization. There are a lot of elements that go into determining where your website will rank in search engines. Over the past few years, Google has rolled out algorithm updates to give preference to sites with stellar content and a great user experience. We know it can be difficult to stay up to date on current digital marketing strategies, as technologies are always changing. We've gathered our top 4 strategies that can help your website get found in an organic search in 2017. User Experience You've likely heard this buzzword throughout 2016, but what does a good user experience actually look like? This means making things as easy as possible for the user, typically by removing any frictions they may have while on your website. This could be eliminating unnecessary pop-ups, reducing page load time, or linking to other pages users may find relevant. Your web developer likely has some ideas to help you out here, but try to take an objective look at your site to see what could be improved. The biggest opportunity we see for a lot of builders is contact forms. You want to make it as easy as possible for users to convert on your website, so requiring a minimal amount of information upfront can help with this. In addition to having a good desktop experience for your users, a strong mobile website will be crucial to SEO success in 2017. We recently hosted a Google Partners event in our office discussing the importance of mobile experience. People have become accustomed to having answers and solutions immediately. They want the information and they want it now. Because of this, mobile content and speed are more important than ever before. While this helps mobile users, search engines are also prioritizing mobile experience. In the past, Google has always used a desktop bot to crawl websites. Recently, they've tested crawling sites with a mobile bot. If a mobile website is just a condensed version of the desktop site, this could cause problems. If the content on your desktop site does not appear on the mobile site, you'll need to rethink your site's mobile design strategy. Content Your site's content and how information is displayed also contribute to the user experience of your website. Users want to find information easily and quickly. Due to the popularity of mobile technologies, our patience for finding what we're looking for is becoming increasingly thin. If a user has to visit seven individual community pages just to identify what cities they're located in, they've likely ditched your website before they had a chance to click on the second community. Providing helpful, relevant information in the fewest amount of clicks possible will ultimately bring you more leads. Schema Markup Schema is a type of structured data search engines use to help understand the content of a website. This includes information such as business name, address, phone number, and social media profiles. A recent, local SEO update from Google confirmed that Google wants to see schema markup when it crawls your website. If you're a Builder Designs client and would like schema installed on your website, sign up here! HTTPS HTTPS, or Secure HyperText Transfer Protocol, exists to help keep private information secure on the internet. You'll need a security certificate to register your domain as an https, again this is likely something your web developer can help you with. Google announced several years ago that https would be a lightweight ranking signal for websites.While this minimally impacts your SEO, it is worth looking into. If you have a login section on your website, such as a realtor or client portal, we definitely recommend making the switch to help keep user data secure.